I woke yesterday hoping against hope that the Nine Inch Nails concert was back on. It wasn’t. I mulled this disappointing circumstance while getting ready for the day. Some of the commenters on NIN’s blog didn’t help matters. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a concert canceled, some cowardly posters left the message “Minneapolis sucks” without going into specifics. Cowardly, because they posted as “Anonymous.” Non-specific because they decided not to go into details about why they thought Minneapolis sucked, but instead made it a general condemnation. If they’d said something about the lousy traffic or the fact that the light rail line has no public toilets available, well, I just might agree, but I can’t agree with an overall report of suckage because I rather like Minneapolis.

Hubby and I had decided that we would still take a trip to Minneapolis and do a bunch of stuff because we had already made day-filling plans. Once we were in the car and off, the sting of a missed concert dulled and only briefly crossed my mind a few times during the day. I brought my camera, so here’s my photo essay with commentary.

Convoy Truck & Wal-Mart Truck

The drive to Minneapolis was fairly uneventful, except that we were caught in a convoy of large military vehicles at one point. This photo shows one of these vehicles in the right lane. See the Wal-Mart truck in the left lane? Once we got past the convoy, this truck almost ran us off the road. It was coasting into our lane while we were right next to it and the driver wasn’t reacting to the fact that we were RIGHT THERE!!!! Hubby had to lay on the horn in order to get the truck to move back into its lane. Talk about a heart attack.

When we got to the Twin Cities area, we stopped at Midwest Brewing so that Hubby could buy a couple of beer kits for homebrewing. The place also sells wine making supplies and organic gardening stuff. It was packed with do-it-yourselfers. I commented to Hubby that a specialty place like this has to locate in a densely populated area in order to find enough people to keep it in business.

After Midwest Brewing, we headed to the Uptown Art Fair in, well, the Uptown area of Minneapolis.

Uptown Art Fair, Minneapolis, MN, August 2, 2008

Uptown Art Fair, Minneapolis, MN, August 2, 2008

Notice that I didn’t take any photos of the art. I didn’t feel like getting embroiled in a potential copyright infringement issue by making derivative versions (i.e. photos) of any of the artists’ work, so this was purposeful. (See what happens when copyright laws are too strictly structured to benefit the artist? No free publicity.) I did see a lovely building, though . . .

Suburban World, Uptown, Minneapolis, MN, August 2, 2008

It looks like it might be a theater, what with the marquee and all, but I can’t tell whether it’s actually called Suburban World, or if that’s an old part of the marquee and there’s different business inside.

While we were in Uptown, we ate lunch at Jimmy John’s. I had a fabulous tuna salad sub with cucumbers, tomatoes, and sprouts. The tuna salad was a perfect combination of salty and crunchy (from the onions, of course!). After lunch we went to a book store. I think it was called Book Smart and it sold new and used books. I bought three books: Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” (for once I actually remembered a book I wanted to read), Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey” (for both Daughter and I to read), and Andrea A. Lunsford’s “The Everyday Writer” (filled with practical advice in a tabbed and spiral-bound format).

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN, August 2, 2008

After Uptown, we made our way to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and spent the afternoon with Chihuly, Close, O’Keefe, Picasso, and Dali, along with many unknown Anishenabe, Egyptian, African, and Indian artists. When I go to the Institute, I know it’s all going to be so overwhelming that my brain will threaten to shut down, so my strategy is to pick a few areas to concentrate on and then look closely only at things that grab me. I wanted to check out textiles, so that was the main goal, and then we got sidetracked by things like an exhibit on Modernism that included a Tatra T87 automobile. My big question was, “How’d they get this car onto the third floor?” There was a nice little book arts exhibit on Picasso’s book illustrations. Hubby and I marvelled at the highly detailed tyed resist dyed fabrics from India and the Anishenabe bandolier bags. While looking at the African exhibit, I spied an Egyptian piece through a doorway. It was a large limestone piece covered in hieroglyphics that I discovered was a false door from a tomb. The false door was a feature that allowed a person’s soul to leave.

One of our favorite pieces was in the entry way of the Institute and we walked right under it without even realizing it was there. Here it is:

Sunburst, Dale Chihuly, 1999, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Hubby and I are huge fans of Dale Chihuly and his spectacular glass work. This is called Sunburst and we asked for permission before taking a picture. When we were in Atlanta, Georgia, last year, we saw two other glass installations by Chihuly. All of his pieces are impressive and organic and beautiful.

By the time we were done at the Institute, it was late afternoon and we decided to head back home. On our way we stopped in Maple Grove and went to a shoe store. (I desparately need a pair, but not so desparately that I’m willing to buy them in the midst of trying to get our children ready to go back to school.)

Following shoe browsing, we went to a place called Curry Up that serves Indian cuisine. The man behind the counter, I’m assuming he was the owner, helped us decide what to order by describing the various dishes, none of which we were familiar with. Game to try anything, we went with his suggestions. We order vegetarian samosa (a ball-shaped cooked dough with a spicy filling), chicken biryani (spicy fried rice with lots of curry, served with yogurt on the side to take away the heat), chicken dosa (a large flat pancake – only not as fat or sweet as pancakes in America – rolled around spicy chicken), and mango lassi (yogurt and mango shakes -mmmmm!). If you paid attention to my descriptions, almost everything on the list was spicy, but it’s a curry kind of spicy that sneaks up on you and makes your lips numb, not an eye-watering, make you choke, hot pepper type of spicy. Everything was served with cooling chutneys and yogurt sauces, which instantly remove the heat from your mouth. (Gosh, describing it is making me hungry!)

We headed home after supper, feeling fat and happy. It was a great day, all in all, NIN concert notwithstanding. Oh, and I managed to knit an entire fingerless glove yesteday.

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

9 thoughts on “A Full Day Without NIN”

I agree with you about the MPLS statement. They could have given a reason for not liking it. It’s the same as any other big city.

I’m so glad you had a good day. I really like the way you get your pictures in your post. I can’t seem to do it that way on my blog. Do you suppose it’s the type of theme we have? It seems I can only put them at the top or the bottom. If I try and put them in the middle of the post, they go in all funny.

Hi, Joy. I had a little trouble with the pics when I first started on WordPress. Since WordPress has been updated, it’s been easier. Let me think about how I do it.

First, I shrink the size of my digital photos to 1/2 their regular size. That makes the file size smaller and seems to make it easier for WordPress to handle them.

Once I have them all ready, I start working on my blog post. When I want to insert a picture, I hit the image icon and select the image I want to upload. At the bottom of the upload screen, there are selections for where you want the photo to display – none, left, center, right. I typically have it set on none, which throws it to the left of the post.

There is also an area for selecting the size of the photo. I think I have medium selected most of the time. (Before WordPress upgraded, I had to use thumbnails.)

After making my selections, I hit the button to insert the photo in the post. It shows up right where I had my cursor when I started the process. If I hit return, I can start typing after the photo.

That’s my process. Hopefully, there’s something in it that will help you tweak your photos.

I love glass art. I don’t GET it (like most airt, honestly), but I do enjoy it. So maybe that’s all there is to “get’ anyway. Mark and I saw an awesome exhibit of glass art in Den Haag a few years ago – amazing. I think it’s a permanent exhibit so if you ever go there should should check it out.

Axle Rose canceled a show I was to attend way back when; because he was sick, but I doubt if he was the same “sick” as Trent; they never rescheduled, those darned rock stars.

I finished Northanger Abbey about 9mnths ago; wasn’t quite what I expected, but then I should have guessed after watching P&P. Still the quaint novel, and helped me reach my understanding of Austen, to which I’m glad I did.

Love the pics, and the one with the squigglies I had to pry my eyes away from before they went screwy; can’t believe that’s glass!

Erin – I think if you enjoy a piece of art, you ‘get’ it. If you’re an artist, you can get all high-falutin’ about it, but it really boils down to a gut feeling that needs no explaining.

Btw, where is Den Haag?

LK – Chihuly does glass work that is so organic that you’d swear some of his pieces are plants. He is also known for having a team of glass workers creating a piece together, rather than working alone – which was apparently not typical in glass work before Chihuly. Here’s a link to my old blog, Filter & Splice: http://filterandsplice.blogspot.com/2007/09/atlanta-botanical-gardens.html.

It’s a post about the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, where there are 2 Chihuly installations. Check out the hanging green piece (pic #3 on the post). When I walked into the room where this was hanging, I actually thought it WAS a plant.

Sorry about that unreliable Axl Rose. I sure hope nothing happens to the new NIN date in Minneapolis. As it gets closer, I’m gonna start holding my breath until I’m at the concert.

I think most people call it The Hague. I call it by the dutch name, since that’s what I got used to calling it while I lived there (and since that’s what mark’s family has always called it, ever since the city was on the horizon of my awareness). plus i never know if you’re supposed to capitalize the The.

As Above, Not So Below

Teacup Art Show

Creative Commons

If you are interested in using any of my work posted on The Woo Woo Teacup Journal for commercial purposes (i.e. you plan to use it to make money), contact me at woowooteacup (at) gmail (dot) com for permission.